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thelanguagecommunity · 6 years ago

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“what language should I learn?”

“is it better to learn [x] or [x]?”

“is it worth learning [x]?”

I get this type of question a lot and I see questions like these a lot on language learning forums, but it’s very difficult to answer because ultimately language learning is a highly personal decision. Passion is required to motivate your studies, and if you aren’t in love with your language it will be very hard to put in the time you need. Thus, no language is objectively better or worse, it all comes down to factors in your life. So, I’ve put together a guide to assist your with the kind of factors you can consider when choosing a language for study.

First, address you language-learning priorities.

Think of the reasons why are you interested in learning a new language. Try to really articulate what draws you to languages. Keeping these reasons in mind as you begin study will help keep you focused and motivated. Here are some suggestions to help you get started, complete with wikipedia links so you can learn more:

Linguistic curiosity?

For this, I recommend looking into dead, literary or constructed languages. There are lots of cool linguistic experiments and reconstructions going on and active communities that work on them! Here’s a brief list:

Dead languages:

Akkadian

Egyptian (Ancient Egyptian)

Gaulish

Gothic

Hittite

Old Prussian

Sumerian

Older iterations of modern day languages:

Classical Armenian

Classical Nahuatl (language of the Aztec Empire)

Early Modern English (Shakespearean English)

Galician-Portuguese

Middle English (Chaucer English)

Middle Persian/Pahlavi

Old English

Old French

Old Spanish

Old Tagalog (+ Baybayin)

Ottoman Turkish

Constructed:

Anglish (experiment to create a purely Anglo-Saxon English)

Esperanto

Interlingua

Láadan (a “feminist language”)

Lingua Franca Nova

Lingwa de Planeta

Lobjan

Toki Pona (a minimalist language)

Wenedyk (what if the Romans had occupied Poland?)

Cultural interests?

Maybe you just want to connect to another culture. A language is often the portal to a culture and are great for broadening your horizons! The world is full of rich cultures; learning the language helps you navigate a culture and appreciate it more fully.

Here are some popular languages and what they are “famous for”:

Cantonese: film

French: culinary arts, film, literature, music, philosophy, tv programs, a prestige language for a long time so lots of historical media, spoken in many countries (especially in Africa)

German: film, literature, philosophy, tv programs, spoken in several Central European countries

Italian: architecture, art history, catholicism (Vatican city!), culinary arts, design, fashion, film, music, opera

Mandarin: culinary arts, literature, music, poetry, tv programs

Japanese: anime, culinary arts, film, manga, music, video games, the longtime isolation of the country has developed a culture that many find interesting, a comparatively large internet presence

Korean: tv dramas, music, film

Portuguese: film, internet culture, music, poetry

Russian: literature, philosophy, spoken in the Eastern Bloc or former-Soviet countries, internet culture

Spanish: film, literature, music, spoken in many countries in the Americas

Swedish: music, tv, film, sometimes thought of as a “buy one, get two free” deal along with Norwegian & Danish

Religious & liturgical languages:

Avestan (Zoroastrianism)

Biblical Hebrew (language of the Tanakh, Old Testament)

Church Slavonic (Eastern Orthodox churches)

Classical Arabic (Islam)

Coptic (Coptic Orthodox Church)

Ecclesiastical Latin (Catholic Church)

Ge’ez (Ethiopian Orthodox Church)

Iyaric (Rastafari movement)

Koine Greek (language of the New Testament)

Mishnaic Hebrew (language of the Talmud)

Pali (language of some Hindu texts and Theravada Buddhism)

Sanskrit (Hinduism)

Syriac (Syriac Orthodox Church, Maronite Church, Church of the East)

Reconnecting with family?

If your immediate family speaks a language that you don’t or if you are a heritage speaker that has been disconnected, then the choice is obvious! If not, you might have to do some family tree digging, and maybe you might find something that makes you feel more connected to your family. Maybe you come from an immigrant community that has an associated immigration or contact language! Or maybe there is a branch of the family that speaks/spoke another language entirely.

Immigrant & Diaspora languages:

Arbëresh (Albanians in Italy)

Arvanitika (Albanians in Greece)

Brazilian German

Canadian Gaelic (Scottish Gaelic in Canada)

Canadian Ukrainian (Ukrainians in Canada)

Caribbean Hindustani (Indian communities in the Caribbean)

Chipilo Venetian (Venetians in Mexico)

Griko (Greeks in Italy)

Hutterite German (German spoken by Hutterite settlers of Canada/US)

Fiji Hindi (Indians in Fiji)

Louisiana French (Cajuns)

Patagonian Welsh (Welsh in Argentina)

Pennsylvania Dutch (High German spoken by early settlers of Canada/ the US)

Plaudietsch (German spoken by Mennonites)

Talian (Venetian in Brazilian)

Texas Silesian (Poles in the US)

Click here for a list of languages of the African diaspora (there are too many for this post!).

If you are Jewish, maybe look into the language of your particular diaspora community ( * indicates the language is extinct or moribund - no native speakers or only elderly speakers):

Bukhori (Bukharan Jews)

Hebrew

Italkian (Italian Jews) *

Judeo-Arabic (MENA Jews)

Judeo-Aramaic

Judeo-Malayalam *

Judeo-Marathi

Judeo-Persian

Juhuri (Jews of the Caucasus)

Karaim (Crimean Karaites) *

Kivruli (Georgian Jews)

Krymchak (Krymchaks) *

Ladino (Sephardi)

Lusitanic (Portuguese Jews) *

Shuadit (French Jewish Occitan) *

Yevanic (Romaniotes)*

Yiddish (Ashkenazi)

Finding a job?

Try looking around for what languages are in demand in your field. Most often, competency in a relevant makes you very competitive for positions. English is in demand pretty much anywhere. Here are some other suggestions based on industry (from what I know!):

Business (General): Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish

Design: Italian (especially furniture)

Economics: Arabic, German

Education: French, Spanish

Energy: Arabic, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish

Engineering: German, Russian

Finance & Investment: French, Cantonese, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish

International Orgs. & Diplomacy (NATO, UN, etc.): Arabic, French, Mandarin, Persian, Russian, Spanish

Medicine: German, Latin, Sign Languages, Spanish

Military: Arabic, Dari, French, Indonesian, Korean, Kurdish, Mandarin, Pashto, Persian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu

Programming: German, Japanese

Sales & Marketing: French, German, Japanese, Portuguese

Service (General): French, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Sign Languages, Spanish

Scientific Research (General): German, Japanese, Russian

Tourism: French, Japanese, Mandarin, Sign Languages, Spanish

Translation: Arabic, Russian, Sign Languages

Other special interests?

Learning a language just because is a perfectly valid reason as well! Maybe you are really into a piece of media that has it’s own conlang!

Fictional:

Atlantean (Atlantis: The Lost Empire)

Dothraki (Game of Thrones)

Elvish (Lord of the Rings)

Gallifreyan (Doctor Who)

High Valyrian (Game of Thrones)

Klingon (Star Trek)

Nadsat (A Clockwork Orange)

Na’vi (Avatar)

Newspeak (1984)

Trigedasleng (The 100)

Vulcan (Star Trek)

Or if you just like to learn languages, take a look maybe at languages that have lots of speakers but not usually popular among the language-learning community:

Arabic

Bengali

Cantonese

Hindi

Javanese

Hausa

Indonesian

Malay

Pashto

Persian

Polish

Punjabi

Swahili

Tamil

Telugu

Thai

Turkish

Urdu

Vietnamese

Yoruba

If you have still are having trouble, consider the following:

What languages do you already speak?

How many and which languages you already speak will have a huge impact on the ease of learning.

If you are shy about speaking with natives, you might want to look at languages with similar consonant/vowel sounds. Similarity between languages’ grammars and vocabularies can also help speed up the process. Several families are famous for this such as the Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Romanian), North Germanic languages (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish) or East Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian). If you are a native English speaker, check out the FSI’s ranking of language difficulty for the approximate amount of hours you’ll need to put into different languages.

You could also take a look at languages’ writing systems to make things easier or for an added challenge.

Another thing to remember is that the languages you already speak will have a huge impact on what resources are available to you. This is especially true with minority languages, as resources are more frequently published in the dominant language of that area. For example, most Ainu resources are in Japanese, most Nheengatu resources are in Portuguese, and most Nahuatl resources are in Spanish.

What are your life circumstances?

Where you live with influence you language studies too! Local universities will often offer resources (or you could even enroll in classes) for specific languages, usually the “big” ones and a few region-specific languages.

Also consider if what communities area near you. Is there a vibrant Deaf community near you that offers classes? Is there a Vietnamese neighborhood you regularly interact with? Sometimes all it takes is someone to understand you in your own language to make your day! Consider what languages you could realistically use in your own day-to-day. If you don’t know where to start, try checking to see if there are any language/cultural meetups in your town!

How much time can you realistically put into your studies? Do you have a fluency goal you want to meet? If you are pressed for time, consider picking up a language similar to ones you already know or maintaining your other languages rather than taking on a new one.

Please remember when choosing a language for study to always respect the feelings and opinions of native speakers/communities, particularly with endangered or minoritized languages. Language is often closely tied to identity, and some communities are “closed” to outsiders. A notable examples are Hopi, several Romani languages, many Aboriginal Australian languages and some Jewish languages. If you are considering a minoritized language, please closely examine your motivations for doing so, as well as do a little research into what is the community consensus on outsiders learning the language.

#o #writing this post took a long time but it was really fun!!#langblr #language learning #choosing a language

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buri-art · 6 years ago

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If you don't mind me asking, how come you're able to live and work in Japan (and China?)? Where did it al begin? I'm just really curious! Thanks!

I don’t mind, thanks for asking! Turns out I’ve been doing some advising on this topic lately. (Scroll to the bottom for specific advice!)It all began with Digimon…

I’ve always had a history of moving from one obsession to another, starting back with Barney the Dinosaur. Then when I was 11-years-old I found myself very curious about that weird Japanese show on Fox Kids, which looked so different from the Western cartoons I was so fond of. What I caught of it kept me surprised–my stereotypes about it were wrong, the characters and their situations were complicated, and plot had depth? What was this and why did it make me care so much??Well, once I decided I was hooked, I was hooked. Obsessed overnight. I needed to know everything there was to know about it, including the country it came from. Guess I better learn Japanese, I thought.

That thought didn’t go away. I generally got obsessed with anime and Japanese culture, anything I could get my weeby little hands on. Wanting to know everything about Japan led to curiosity about China too, because if you’re going to stretch far back in the origins of Japanese culture, eventually you’re going to get interested in the big collection of nations and time periods known as Ancient China. (Stuff like Fushigi Yuugi and the anime rendition of Condor Hero sure helped drive that interest.)I stayed obsessed with Japan all through my teen years (and started Japanese study in earnest when I was 16) and I chose a college where I could start studying Chinese. It seemed like the natural progression in my studies by that point, but I guess other people thought it was surprising. Or they called me a traitor. (I can tell you now that lots and lots of people wind up studying both.)

Anyway, I went in to college with a pretty wide knowledge of East Asia, but studying it from all sorts of angles, getting good advising in school from nerdy professors, and studying abroad certainly made my understanding more nuanced. Going to a small school where it was easy to stick out also helped me get a good handful of work-study experiences and special attention for my particular passions. (It helps that a couple teachers were enamored with traditional Chinese culture, another loved Heian aesthetics, another wrote a dissertation about the production of shoujo manga, and another loved to give students free food. Now those are my people.)What most people find surprising was that even though I had a heavier course load in Asian studies, my major was Economics. I was concerned about finding work with only nerdy Asian studies, and I felt like I needed to save the world by working at an NGO and sacrificing my personal happiness for the sake of the poor and underprivileged. (I still feel like that, but thankfully there are more ways to support NGOs than only by working in them.) In my research topics I usually had a special focus on developing nations in Asia, and I made sure to get a good understanding of the whole region, not just, like, Edo period gay samurai fanfiction (yeah, that was totally a thing).Well, anyway, I never worked at an NGO. I went to grad school to keep working on my Chinese while keeping up independent Japanese study (including the JLPT), then I worked for the one international company in my hometown doing stuff for their Asian side of business. It was cool if you had any interest in engineering, but I didn’t. I like culture. The weeb shit, as it’s known. All according to keikaku, I became a Coordinator for International Relations on the JET Program (it’s not all English teachers!), and had the time of my life in Matsue (my love for that place is seeeeerious). That’s when I took my wide knowledge of Japan and started getting deeper knowledge, by doing anything and everything, especially practicing naginata, tea ceremony, and competitive kimono dressing. (I like to say I broke the weeb scale a long time ago.) Even among CIRs, who all speak Japanese fairly fluently, I guess I was noteworthy for my nerdy knowledge of obscure pieces of local culture, and my enthusiasm for sharing it. That’s just me being my obsessive self, folks. But yeah, lots of JET Program participants are obsessive and eager to go out and experience things. Aaaahhh, my people. After that, I felt I needed more experience in China, so I got a teaching job (which is relatively easy to do, if you’re a native English speaker). Due to my work schedule and living in Shanghai as opposed to like, Wuyishan or even Hangzhou, I didn’t devote as much as to cultural classes as I originally planned on, but I did practice tea and martial arts throughout my time there, and I continued to work on my Mandarin and gaining obscure cultural knowledge, but especially gaining experience melding with society there. Although it was more overwhelming, I do feel much more competent with my Chinese skills now, and I still love a lot of the culture and have so much more traveling I want to do there. I can still nerd out so hard for so much there.Moving back to Japan felt like a very natural course of things. I know a lot of people who have been happy to be Japan-nerds from a distance, or do the JET Program for a while and then just go back to visit, but at least for now, I don’t see myself happy with only visiting. I have personality flaws, like being very inflexible, that make me work very well in a rigid society like Japan. I’m too used to good convenience stores to live happily without them. I enjoy speaking Japanese all the time instead of taking occasional opportunities. Also, my niche skill set is kind of useless in my part of the US. I did try to find work here, really. That being said, having niche skills means that when I’m useful, I’m super useful. Job searching from outside of Japan was a lot more challenging than applying for the JET Program (which any JET applicant can tell you is not a simple process, but once you’re in, you really appreciate how much they handle for you in matters of moving abroad). It was really, really nerve-wracking to turn down two very good corporate job offers in favor of a somewhat new hotel chain. I really wanted to enter the tourism industry because this feels like the only place (outside of academia) where I can use all my obsessive studies of mainstream and obscure but especially traditional culture, and where my gushing about how much I love stuff is actually useful. Plus, it’ll make use of all three of my languages, not just one or two at a time. I hope this will work out for at least the next few years, if not forever. I also hope that if I live in the US in the future to be closer to family*, then I’ll have enough industry experience to work in hotels here or start a tour company targeted at Asian clients. (*Family is the primary reason I still consider long-term life in America, and it’s a big one, and worrying about them is the hardest part about living abroad. Excessive humidity in a lot of Asia is another reason I might choose to live in the Western US.)But like, now my hobbies are my job. While it won’t be the bulk of it, wearing kimono and performing tea ceremonies is no longer something that makes me cool and special and unexpectedly useful, it’s going to be what I need to be professionally competent in (eeeeeeep). This is the kind of stuff that obsessive teenage Buri would have swooned to know, but also totally expected. Career-Buri is a little more level-headed about it and also very grateful to have these opportunities. So anyway, advice!!—If you think you want to do anything in China or Japan, START STUDYING THE LANGUAGES NOW. Yes, I know they’re difficult. No, there’s no perfect program. Whatever you’re going to use, just do it consistently. Fluency is not actually required for a lot of jobs, but hot damn, some language skills will help. (For reference, I passed N1 of the JLPT before starting JET, and passed HSK5 while I was in grad school. I studied for HSK6 while I was in China and would have had a 50/50 chance of passing, but chose not to because it’s not actually that useful for the price I’d pay for it.)–To get a work visa in either country, 99 times out of a 100, you’re going to need a Bachelor’s degree. Your major is not usually as important as simple proof of graduation. Many places will care about your grades, though, so try to keep them up. –Teaching is still the easiest way to get there. There’s a wealth of programs to recruit you, but I suggest trying to steer clear of places that only provide a stipend instead of a salary, or small dispatch companies with questionable reputations. The JET Program is probably the best way to teach in Japan because of the level of support you get, but I’ve known people who had good experiences on the larger dispatch companies like Altia or Interac as well. For more direct hires, there are English tutoring companies (like English First (EF) or Coco Juku) where you might have students of all ages, as well as companies that focus on very small children (where you’ll basically be a glorified preschool teacher). On that note, many kindergartens and other for-profit education companies (like what I did in China) will hire directly, but your experience can vary widely. Finally, you can also look into international schools, but your teaching credentials will be much more important. Any background in teaching, or TESOL certification, will be a boon to your application (and at some places, your paycheck). –All of these places will want to see that you are a dependable, flexible person. Getting experience abroad, being able to speak frankly about challenges you’ve dealt with, and showing a willingness to go anywhere and do whatever is needed will look really good on your interviews. I say this a JET Program interviewer; the people who displayed the most patience and maturity were the people we felt best about giving a high score to. Those are the people we like to send out into the communities. –As we like to say in the JET Program, every situation is different (ESID for short). That applies to every teaching situation you might yourself in abroad.–You don’t have to be a teacher (after all, I only did JET because of the CIR position, I loved it!!). But you’re going to have to be really competent in whatever else it is you’re doing. Headhunters, such as at Pasona Global (which has branches in many Asian countries), are really, really good to work with, but they are most likely to hook you up with corporate jobs in big cities. If that’s what you want, awesome. (I wound up finding my hotel through a Japanese job searching site specifically for tourism related work. Other industry-specific fields may have their own job hunting sites, possibly in English, possibly not.) Language competency will be a lot more important if you take this route. –If at all possible, STUDY ABROAD!!! Many people will get the experience they want doing this instead of dealing with the frustrations of working and residing abroad. It’s a good way to see how much you love it and decide if the frustrations are worth it. Plus, it really helps your job applications. –Even if you can’t work abroad due to your personal situation, PLEASE TRY TO TRAVEL THERE!!!! When you’re interested in another culture or a foreign language, it means so, sooooo much to be there, even if it’s temporary. I don’t just say this as someone who has chosen tourism as my calling (though I am more than happy to give travel advice), I say this as a passionate nerd. I feel you. I get you. You need this. –Back to studies and stuff though, if you’re going to major in some form of area studies or foreign language, it is difficult to get jobs with that alone. Consider double-majoring in something that will play into that, or which will open other career options. Money is kind of important, especially if you’re going to have to pay for flights across the Pacific.

–That being said, study what you care about too. You know how oddly useful my elective class about Non-Western Theater has been!?!? And if something in anime catches your attention, for goodness sake, you’re on THE INTERNET. If you liked Jubei-chan, go study samurai, if you like Fruits Basket, go learn to make onigiri, if you like Mob Psycho 100, then go—well—um—go work out, being physically healthy is also important!!

Well, anyway, that’s long enough. Good luck to all you nerds out there!! KEN TANAKA LOVES YOU and all that good stuff!!

#wow this got long #tl:dr #I'm a nerd and that might help you too

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dxmedstudent · 6 years ago

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A little bit about BSL...

Every once in a while I see posts by hearing UK studyblrs wishing to pick up BSL (British Sign Language) and not knowing where to start. There are usually a few links shared, but few posts seem to go into any depth about BSL as a language, or Deaf culture. So I thought I’d share a little of what I’ve learned, as a beginner in BSL, so anyone completely new to BSL but interested in learning gets a better idea of where to start. It must be noted that, as a hearing individual, my experience of Deaf culture has only scratched the surface and can’t even begin to do the topic justice; that’s precisely why I recommend both further reading and learning with an accredited centre run by the Deaf community. If there are any inaccuracies in my post, I’d be more than happy for anyone to add to my post or correct me. Why learn BSL?

The reasons why anyone chooses to learn a langauge can be unique to them. Many learn BSL because they have to; many speakers are Deaf, or have loved ones who are, and therefore become immersed in the community. Some learn BSL for work. Others learn it for other reasons. Although 9 million people experience hearing loss (19% of the population), most of them become hard of hearing later in life, and most of them do not learn how to sign. Only around 50,000 people use BSL as their preferred language according to the government, though BAD suggests the figure is higher, between 151,000 and 87,000.

For me, I felt that the Deaf community are under-served; they face poorer health outcomes in a wide range of conditions. I feel that provision for deaf people is often inadequate, and I’ve seen firsthand how frustrated my elderly patients can be when we struggle to communicate with them. I learned to communicate much better with them, but I felt that it would be nice to do more. Although I know that it’d take me a long time to become anywhere near fluent enough to be able to converse with my Deaf patients independently, I hope that the BSL I do learn can help me to make them feel more comfortable and included.

The background: Deaf Culture

A good starting point would be to do some reading on the Deaf community in the UK, and on the history of Deaf Culture and BSL as a whole. Here’s a good clip on Deafhood. Here’s a useful timeline. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of films about the Deaf community.

Like many minority languages, sign languages have faced more than their fair share of oppression and silencing. Although the hearing world interprets deafness as a disability, most Deaf people will tell you that Deafeness is their rich culture; they do not feel disabled in the world they create for themselves; only when the hearing community is unwilling or able to meet their needs. The reason for this is partly that it’s a very practical language; it relies a lot on how exactly you create the signs, and ‘sloppy’ signing is something that we can all fall into when we don’t know what we’re doing. You couldn’t get to being fluent in French just by talking to yourself, so it’s just like that. It’s also important because BSL is its own language, with its own construction; you don’t usually put the signs in the same order as they would go in English, and these kinds of things can be harder to get from books; whereas when communicating with people, it all starts to flow more naturally. It’s also important in the sense that when we learn BSL, we are learning about and participating in a culture; it’s not something we can learn in isolation from the Deaf people whose culture and life experience it is. It’s not just a language; the Deaf community has its own way of communicating, and it’s own history and social events; learning BSL from a book can help, but the best way to really understand the people you wish to communicate with is to ensure that you actually learn to speak with them, and not at them. It’s also worth noting that there are lots of regional signs and dialects; just because BSL has exam boards doesn’t mean the signs used are the same everywhere; for example, two of my instructors used different signs for ‘blood’; neither was wrong, they were just different.

Learing resources: why face to face teaching is better: It’s great that there are lots of resources online, which can certainly help build up your confidence with the basics and foster independent learning, but just like any language, the most useful way to learn is through a framework or qualification of some kind. So if someone’s interested in learning BSL, I do recommend face-to face lessons, or at least regular communication with Deaf people.

The best way to practice is with native users; this is why accredited BSL instructors; generally have to be Deaf, and lessons take place only in BSL. This sounds intimidating at first, but it makes the experience really immersive; you’ll be surprised how fast you pick things up. It’s also important because it provides work for native users who are fluent in BSL; deaf people can face more limited employment options because the hearing world can struggle to accommodate them, so supporting Deaf instructors can help the community as a whole. Self-directed learning: There are books and videos out there that can help guide you (videos thend to be more useful, because movement can be an important component of signs), and no matter how else you are learning, it never hurts to have more materials available. You’ll probably want to start with things like the signing alphabet, numbers, etc, which are most important, because in BSL if we’re not sure what a sign is, finger spelling it out is how we learn our vocabulary. There are dictionaries, which are amazing and can make life a lot easier, but just like learning any other language it helps to work alongside a framework of some sort; to start with building the vocabulary and constructions to deal with everyday topics until you can say interesting and useful things. Qualifications: If you want to pursue learning sign language further, and have an actual qualification in it, Signature and iBSL are the examination boards for BSL, and The qualifications for BSL are set by level; so there’s level 1, 2, 3, 4, with the complexity and level of fluency increasing the higher up you go. Signature’s website can help you find local learning centres and sign up to face to face courses. I also recommend this because local learning centres will also often host social events for BSL users and learners, and that can be a great way to practice the language and learn about the culture from the Deaf community. Some more (free and paying) useful sources:

British-sign.co.uk dictionary

Signworld do some basic ‘learn sign language’ videos

Deafworkmate has some really useful basic videos that can help with basics like sign order.

I love SignBSL’s dictionary of youtube clips for various words and it also comes as an app.

Signstation are part of the University of Bristol and have some really useful lessons.

British Deaf Association

British sign language dictionary with videos

BSL discussion forumBSL

SignBankSchool of Sign Language

UCL signbank.

Some Early Years material with basic signs

Signature (BSL exam board) have their own website with resources.

Deafbooks’ shop has a wide range of dictionaries and useful books and flashcards.

Deafbooks also have a free downloads page.

More useful resources for learning BSL.

DCAL list of BSL lexical norms.

Macmillan cancer support have some great videos explaining cancer in BSL; good for health-related vocabulary.

Signhealth charity.

Chemistry terms in BSL.

list of 10 useful sites for learning BSL for free.

List of apps focused on BSL.

Finding courses: Hotcourses and Courses plus have a list of online and face to face courses that you can attend. Some of the online ones are heavily discounted, and might be useful if the affordability of face-to-face classes is a challenge (or a time issue). british-sign.co.uk also have their own online courses for a reasonable price. he quality of the courses listed on these websites might vary; I’m not sure whether they are all Signature accredited. But there are a wide variety of courses in many areas, so it’s worth taking a look. If anyone is interested, Oxford uni has a list of resources for various sign languages around the world.

I’d like to finish with a quote from Oliver Sacks: “I found it an astonishing and moving experience. I had never before seen an entire community of the deaf, nor had I quite realized (even though I knew this theoretically) that Sign might indeed be a complete language – a language equally suitable for making love or speeches, for flirtation or mathematics. I had to see philosophy and chemistry classes in Sign; I had to see the absolutely silent mathematics department at work; to see deaf bards, Sign poetry, on the campus and the range and depth of the Gallaudet theatre; I had to see the wonderful social scene in the student bar, with hands flying in all directions as a hundred separate conversations proceeded – I had to see all this for myself before I could be moved from my previous “medical” view of deafness (as a condition, a deficit, that had to be “treated”) to a “cultural” view of the deaf as forming a community with a complete language and culture of its own.”(Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks, © 1989)

#bsl #deaf culture #learn bsl #langblr #studyblr #personal #my life #deaf

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neptunecreek · 6 years ago

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Social Media Councils: A Better Way Forward, Window Dressing, or Global Speech Police?

Social media platforms routinely make arbitrary and contradictory decisions about what speech to block or penalize. No one is happy with the status quo: not people who want more censorship, nor people who want less censorship, nor people who simply want platforms to make different choices so that already-marginalized groups won't bear the brunt of their censorship policies. So many are looking for a better way forward. EFF offered a few thoughts on this last week, but we've also been looking at another persistent and intriguing idea, spearheaded largely by our friends at Article 19: the creation of social media council (SMC) to review content moderation decisions. Ever since Facebook announced a plan to create its own version, there’s been a surge of interest in this approach. Can it work?

At root, the concept is relatively simple: we can’t trust the platforms to do moderation well, so maybe we need an independent council to advise them on ways to do it better, and call them out when they blow it. A council might also provide an independent appeal mechanism for content removal decisions.

There are many different models for these councils. An appeals court is one. Or we might look to the international arbitration structure that handles domain name disputes. Or European press councils which administer codes of practice for journalists, investigate complaints about editorial content, and defend press freedom. They are funded by the media themselves, but aim to be independent.

We’re all in favor of finding ways to build more due process into platform censorship. That said, we have a lot of questions. Who determines council membership, and on what terms? What happens when members disagree? How can we ensure the council’s independence from the companies it’s intended to check? Who will pay the bills, keeping in mind that significant funding will be needed to ensure that it is not staffed only by the few organizations that can afford to participate? What standard will the councils follow to determine whether a given decision is appropriate? How do they decide which of the millions of decisions made get reviewed? How can they get the cultural fluency to understand the practices and vocabulary of every online community? Will their decisions be binding on the companies who participate, and if so, how will the decisions be enforced? A host of additional questions are raised in recent document from the Internet and Jurisdiction Policy Network.

But our biggest concern is that social media councils will end up either legitimating a profoundly broken system (while doing too little to fix it) or becoming a kind of global speech police, setting standards for what is and is not allowed online whether or not that content is legal. We are hard-pressed to decide which is worse.

To help avoid either outcome, here are some guideposts, taken in part from our work on Shadow Regulation and the Santa Clara Principles:

Independence: SMCs should not be subject to or influenced by the platforms they are meant to advise. As a practical matter, that means that they should not depend directly on such platforms for funding (though platforms might contribute to an independently administered trust), and the platforms should not select council members. In addition, councils must be shielded from government pressures.

Roles: SMCs should not be regulators, but advisors. For example, an SMC might be charged with interpreting whether a platform’s decisions accurately reflect the platform’s own policies, and whether those policies themselves conform to international human rights standards. SMCs should not seek to play a legal role, such as interpreting local laws. Any such role could lead to SMCs becoming a practical speech police, exacerbating an existing trend where extrajudicial decision-makers are effectively controlling huge swaths of online expression. In addition, SMC members may not have the training needed to interpret local laws (hopefully they won’t all be lawyers), or may interpret them in a biased way. To avoid these pitfalls, SMCs should focus instead on interpreting specific community standards and determining if the company is adhering to its own rules.

Subject matter: Different platforms should be able make different moderation choices—and users should be able to as well. So rather than being arbiters of “legitimate” speech, determining a global policy to which all platforms must adhere, SMCs should focus on whether an individual platform is being faithful to its own policies. SMCs can also review the policies to advise on whether the policies are sufficiently clear, transparent, and subject to non-discriminatory enforcement, and identify the areas where they are less protective of speech than applicable law or violate international human rights norms.

Jurisdiction: Some have suggested that SMCs should be international, reflecting the actual reach of many social media platforms, and should seek to develop and implement a coherent international standard. We agree with Article 19 that a national approach would be better because a national council will be better placed to review company practice in light of varying local norms and expectations. A regional approach might also work if the region's law and customs are sufficiently consistent.

Personnel: SMCs should be staffed with a combination of experts in local, national, and international laws and norms. To promote legitimacy, members should also represent diverse views and communities and ideally should be selected by the people who will be affected by their decisions. And there must be adequate funding to ensure that members who cannot afford to travel to meetings or donate their time are adequately compensated.

Transparency: The review process should be transparent and the SMC’s final opinions should be public, with appropriate anonymization to protect user privacy. In addition, SMCs should produce annual reports on their work, including data points such as how many cases they reviewed, the type of content targeted, and how they responded. New America has a good set of specific transparency suggestions (focusing on Facebook).

Facebook says it’s planning to launch its “Oversight Board” by the end of the year. We urge Facebook and others toying with the idea of social media councils to look to these guidelines. And we urge everyone else—platforms, civil society, governments, and users—to fight to ensure that efforts to promote due process in content moderation aren’t perverted to support the creation of an international, unaccountable, extrajudicial speech police force.

from Deeplinks http://bit.ly/2E15SnF

#Deeplinks

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careergrowthblog · 6 years ago

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Why @researchEd1 is so brilliant. And necessary.

One of the most exciting elements of the education scene in the last five years…. no, let me start again….. THE most exciting element of the education scene in the last five years as far as I’m concerned, has been the emergence and expansion of the ResearchEd movement started by Tom Bennett in 2013. Supported all the way by Hélène Gladin-O’Shea and a small band of volunteers including the brilliant Alex Weatherall who designed the programmes, ResearchEd has played a massively important role in providing a forum for research-informed ideas to circulate around the system. For me personally, it’s been a huge influence.

The first event at Dulwich College in 2013 was epic – from Ben Goldacre’s grand late-arrival entrance onwards. I wrote a blog about it at the time and this is how it starts:

What a day!

One of the best things about the ResearchED conference at Dulwich College was that it happened. It embodied the concept of a practitioner-led system perfectly. This is what ‘bottom-up’ looks like. It was a great thrill to participate in an event that brought so many education professionals together in the spirit of ‘by the people for the people’, tackling the issues we face in education on our own terms; a gathering of classroom and research practitioners meeting to exchange perspectives on the important work we all do.It was magnificent. It felt like the start of something. I hope that’s true.

Five years on, it’s safe to say that that was true; Dulwich 2013 was the start of something. Just browsing the themes explored in that first programme (a treasured possession), it’s amazing how expansive and ambitious the whole enterprise was. Five years (of accrued wisdom) later – ResearchEd is going strong, reaching out across the nation and the globe – and Tom Bennett remains the fireball driving force; flying the flag for evidence-informed practice, continually inviting new faces and voices to join the community and using all his wit and web-savvy wileyness to get the message out.

Tom Bennett…. 2013:2018

With the publication of the new magazine, it’s great to see ResearchEd established as part of our landscape with multiple lines of communication between researchers and teachers around the world. The dialogue is lively, dynamic, intelligent, thought-provoking…. it’s the discourse our profession should be having; we don’t all agree; new ideas come along all the time; our methods and conclusions are continually open to scrutiny; biases and values-systems interact with the evidence as we sift through it for actionable ideas – the good ‘bets’; the implementation of ideas in real classrooms is explored and evaluated… it’s all good; all exciting.

I’m delighted – honoured – to have been involved in this journey, from talking at the first event to contributing an article in the first magazine – (about one of my favourite books – Why Don’t Students Like School by Daniel Willingham.)

Five years of ResearchEd

I’ve also taken part in 10 or more different events around the country and in Toronto, Norway and Sweden. No two are the same – and I love them all. The annual national conference is always excellent but it’s the spirit of the regional events that really captures the grassroots feel of ResearchEd. Each event is organised locally by someone with huge energy and commitment; each event brings a new wave of first-time attendees and first-time speakers. The atmosphere, without exception, is a buzz of people talking, sharing, being inspired, feeling enlightened. Always on a Saturday… people giving up weekends to invest time in the ideas that shape their professional lives and their students’ education. It’s a wonderful thing.Just off the top of my head, some talks have given me major insights into my professional life supporting teachers and leaders in their work:

Ros Walker – Rugby 2017 – a superb talk about knowledge and schemas in science. I’ve carried around the idea of ‘tacit knowledge’ in science ever since; it made so much sense and significantly influences how I think about science curriculum planning. I also picked up the idea of progress being defined in reference to knowledge of the curriculum, not grades or linear numerical flightpaths.

David Weston, Phillippa Cordingley , Harry Fletcher Wood – various events combined – the nature of effective CPD and professional learning: Different talks at different events each adding something to my understanding of the process teachers and institutions go through to improve teaching – and all the potential barriers and pitfalls.

Ben Newmark – Rugby 2017 – the problematic use of generic skill descriptors versus knowledge based assessments in history teaching.

Peps McCrae- Durrington 2018 – the idea the teacher expertise is partly dependent on knowing our students so that, when meeting a new class, we can’t be truly expert; not until we get to know them as learners, using that knowledge to inform our teaching and planning.

Clare Sealy – Durrington 2018 – the idea of fluency and automaticity. This expression of practice and the power of it for future learning was so vivid: fluency through practice – lots of practice – with massive benefits in so many areas of learning.

Rebecca Foster – Birmingham – 2018 – a superb exposition of how an English curriculum can be designed to take account of cogsci findings about memory and retrieval and spaced practice – amongst other things!

Mark McCourt – Rugby 2018 – a brilliant talk about maths teaching reinforcing the idea that maths teachers should do maths; that each problem or difficulty is ‘an opportunity’ – helping me to place ideas about ‘enquiry’ in maths in the context of a rigorous mastery approach…

Daisy Christodoulou – several talks at different events slightly merging in my memory: ideas about formative and summative assessment, comparative judgement and the concept of difficulty in tests.

Nick Rose – York Huntington 2016 (I think) – the idea that primitive schemas – laced with misconceptions – remain with us even when new ones are learned so we can revert back to them unless newer, better schema are embedded; this requires attention to the old schema; breaking them down, tackling misconceptions head on.

Pedro De Bruyckere and David Didau – Oslo 2017 – debunking myths: Both David and Pedro have done superb talks looking at learning styles, dodgy pyramids of various kinds and, generally, raising awareness of specific studies and of the evidence-gathering process.

So, although it obviously isn’t remotely the only great thing going on – I could write a long list – ResearchEd is brilliant. It’s a model that works; it’s open to all – and regardless of what some ill-informed nay-sayers might choose to believe to suit their own biases and agendas, it’s as grassroots as any education movement I can think of – even if a government official approves. (I find the Tom Bennett bashing that goes on pretty outrageous given what he does for nothing relative to what others do for ££££).

Why does it matter? Well, broadly, it’s because there are thousands of teachers out in the system who have yet to engage in evidence-informed thinking. I know this because I meet them all the time. And even for those with some general awareness of key ideas, it takes time to explore and embed ideas in practice and sharing implementation stories is massively helpful. Then there is the need to rescue people from blind alleys. For instance, literally just this week I was at an event where one set of teachers presented to some others in a workshop ideas based on VAK learning styles. It’s 2018 and they were literally introducing people to VAK as a good basis for lesson planning. There were separate activities and guidance sheets for visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners… and there was a Bloom’s taxonomy with the usual relegation of knowledge to the bottom; the least important, not the most important. Someone repeated the false-attribution ‘Socrates’ quote about lighting fires, not filling pails and we were off into evidence-free backwaters. This stuff goes on – alongside all the unevidenced, workload inducing macro-data tracking, dubious lesson planning structures, poor assessment practice and the all-too-common ‘wasted teaching’ that happens day in day out across the land.

The fact is that, much as some folk get tired of hearing these thing being tackled… there are teachers and leaders out there across the system running schools and colleges on gut instinct and memes or hideous compliance structures. It’s not good enough for a serious profession. Lots of teachers are coming to cognitive science and classroom-based research for the first time; lots of teachers are only just finding about about Hattie and EEF meta-meta analyses, RCTs and effect sizes even as others are debating their validity… There are people out there who, with more understanding of some very strong ideas – such as those presented by Rosenshine, Bjork, Sweller, Christodoulou, Wiliam, Nuthall, Willingham, etc etc etc ….would be teaching a whole lot better than they are now, with reduced workload and more effective assessment regimes. It matters because we can do so much better.

ResearchEd is five years in but is just getting started; we need every avenue we can find to spread ideas and get people involved in the discussion. Attending a local or national ResearchEd event is superb way to find out how these ideas take shape in real classrooms or how policy makers and researchers gain and use evidence to inform their thinking. The list of future events is here: https://researched.org.uk/events/list/

I’ll end with a personal vote of thanks to Tom Bennett for getting this show on the road and for keeping it there. I’m in awe of the energy and persistence Tom has shown in driving ResearchEd forward… and I”m continually thrilled and delighted to be able to play a part. Next up for me: September London: October Philadelphia (with Dylan Wiliam and Eric Kalenze): February Haninge … and plenty more to come. Can’t wait.

Why @researchEd1 is so brilliant. And necessary. published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege

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technato · 7 years ago

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Electric Jolt to the Brain Helps Stop Stutters

Weak electrical stimulation to the brain’s speech regions enhances the benefits of speech therapy for those who stutter

Photo: Speech and Brain Research Group/University of Oxford

Their tongues might trip up over the name of the treatment, but people who stutter perform better on a speech test after receiving a daily jolt of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).

That’s according to the results of a British trial, which found that coupling brain zapping with a five-day course of speech therapy helps those with stutters make positive, lasting changes in their communication skills.

Hobbyists and athletes are already using tDCS to boost their memory, learning, and creativity. And there’s a growing body of evidence that the neurostimulation can ease the symptoms of pain and depression, as well as promote recovery in stroke victims, including in their language skills.

But the new report, which will appear in the April 2018 issue of the journal Brain, is the first from a randomized clinical trial—the gold standard in medical research—to show that the technique can improve speech fluency in people who have not suffered any major insult to the brain but instead have a developmental speech condition.

“It’s a big deal,” says Rick Arenas, a speech scientist who runs the University of New Mexico Stuttering Lab and was not involved in the study. Neurostimulation, he says, “really looks extremely promising.”

Why it’s helping, however, remains unclear. It’s thought that the tDCS augments the brain’s ability to reorganize itself, thereby strengthening the new neural connections formed during behavioral speech therapy. But as Elizabeth Galletta, a speech-language pathologist at NYU Langone’s Rusk Rehabilitation, readily admits: “It’s still a black box.”

For the study, Jen Chesters, a speech and language therapist at the University of Oxford, worked with 30 stuttering speakers, spending five straight days training the men to read aloud and converse at a normal pace. (All were male to reduce variability between subjects.) During each day’s 20-minute therapy session, the participants all wore electrical caps on their heads, but only half actually received tDCS; the others received only sham stimulation—a brief buzz to trick people into thinking they were getting the real deal—and neither Chesters nor the participants knew who was getting what.

The tDCS device delivered a weak electric current through a credit card–sized electrode to the brain’s left frontal cortex, the key region for speech planning and production. The stimulation involved a constant current of just 1 milliamp—less than what’s needed to power a typical LED. Yet, that tiny tingle made all the difference.

Participants who received the tDCS showed significant reductions in their stuttering severity, both one week and six weeks after the intervention, whereas those who got the sham treatment experienced little to no change. “The tDCS is working to boost the effects of the behavioral intervention,” Chesters says.

That electric boost only helped modify certain measures of stuttering, though. It had lasting effects on participants’ abilities to declaim a written passage, but the increased conversational fluency that the men experienced one week after the intervention disappeared by week six. Outward improvements in speech smoothness also didn’t translate into improvements in the psychosocial aspects of stuttering, as measured by a self-assessment tool of participants’ own experiences.

So, while Galletta describes the Oxford team’s results as “very exciting,” she also thinks that tDCS researchers “need to look at stuttering in a more holistic way.”

Looking ahead, Chesters and her Oxford colleagues, led by neuropsychologist Kate Watkins, are planning to gather a wide range of metrics in their next study, a 40-person follow-up called INSTEP that is currently open for enrollment. In that trial, the researchers are pairing a 20-minute stimulation protocol in speech regions from both halves of the brain with a 40-minute speech-training paradigm (to be closer to a true clinical session), and then testing participants 12 weeks out from their weeklong intervention to see how long the benefits persist.

Meanwhile, across the pond at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, speech neurophysiologist Soo-Eun Chang and her colleagues are running their own tDCS trial for stuttering, but it differs from the Oxford group’s INSTEP study in a number of ways. It’s using high-definition tDCS, with electrodes smaller than a dime, to deliver 1.5 milliAmps of localized stimulation to a region in the brain involved in speech timing called the supplementary motor area.

Chang and her team are also putting study subjects in a brain scanner, applying functional magnetic resonance imaging before the intervention, right afterwards, and then at two later follow-up times. “The whole point is to see if we can increase their fluency level,” says Chang. “But on top of that, we are aiming to increase brain connectivity patterns with tDCS that may help sustain fluent speech for longer periods.”

Given the ease with which amateur enthusiasts can now build their own tDCS rigs, there may be a temptation among people who stutter to shoot currents through their own heads as they engage in their fluency homework—but Arenas, who himself talks with a stutter and has tried tDCS for his own speech impediment, cautions against doing so. “This is extremely early on,” he says, “and there’s still a lot of work that should be done.”

Among the variables to be tested: where to place the electrodes, how much current to use, how long to deliver stimulation, and what kinds of behavioral tasks best pair with tDCS. “A lot of methodological research will be necessary to find out what the optimal parameters are, because there are a lot of choices you can make,” says Dirk den Ouden, a neurolinguist at the University of South Carolina.

Peggy Conner, a speech-language pathologist from CUNY’s Lehman College, has another concern about the technology. As she and other experts hone in on the optimal way deliver tDCS for persistent stutterers, there’s a risk that they may inadvertently further medicalize and stigmatize a condition that many think should instead be embraced as part of the normal neurodevelopmental spectrum.

“The danger of the pursuit of fluency for people who stutter,” Conner says, “is we may mitigate a greater societal need for stuttering acceptance.”

Electric Jolt to the Brain Helps Stop Stutters syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

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somma-chronicles-blog · 7 years ago

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New Winds Move the Martial Air- SOMMA’s Chronicles Prologue

There used to be eras when chivalrous heroes walked the lands, accomplishing amazing feats with nothing but a righteous mind and martial skill. It was a time when order sought to assert itself over lawlessness, the individual aspired to improve themselves, and their eventual mastery became legendary. That age of martial arts had been driven underground during the 20th century, with the advance of technologies and warfare becoming increasingly mechanical. While it meant that mankind could now fight wide-scale and even covertly with greater efficiency, the argument could be made that martial arts culture, which had helped temper mind, body and spirit equally, now declined and became a mere curiosity. Barehanded brawling had also changed forever with the advent of concealable firearms, and underwent a similar schism when legality asserted itself as the main means of settling disputes. While this was outwardly a sign of increasingly civilized society, the regression of the warrior class can be inversely tied to the success of economic importance in society. By the 21st century, martial arts have mostly become a business to be operated, a sport to cultivate athletes, or a mix in between. In more unfortunate situations, it was an incomplete outlet for the angry and delusional. Fewer masters were being taught to their acme cultivation, and a style’s popularity waxed or waned depending on popular culture films. Yet as it is written in the metaphysical prose of Tao De Ching, “The Way that can be spoken is not the Eternal Way”. True Martial Arts culture lingers, embers fanned every so often, and while the stage changes, the essence will accommodate the form. At the society of multilateral martial arts, known as SOMMA, different perspectives interact regularly to cultivate personal growth. Could this possibly be the move that breaks the temperament of mediocrity and decline? New winds will move the stagnant air, culminating in a revitalising storm.

The path of a martial artist has not changed much over the centuries, though the status of practitioners underwent much reform. With modern training methodology and vast leaps in biological/physiological sciences, certain approaches to training were bound to vary. Yet as human physiques have remained almost identical to the variety available in the past, more was similar than not about how people went about it. Some might interject that the modern human tends to be rounder, less active, and suffering from decreased attention spans, but even so, the distribution of body types remains stable. After all, strenuous physical activity tends to attract certain body types, and those attending this particular SOMMA session would agree that it was anything but a walk in the park. As expected of that year’s assistant instructor Jakov, who was devoted to hardcore training and enforced this standard upon the class. By the time the partner drills were finished, and those in charge satisfied with the results, everyone was directed into a low stance; their legs were ready to collapse by the time Jakov released them from it. Gathering in a large circle, as was traditional for the start/end of class, everyone bowed as a sign of mutual respect and broke away for refreshment. Some immediately headed for the restrooms, mostly to clean their appearance of sweat and dirt accumulated over the course of the evening. Others continued training with respective partners, a familiar pair of ground fighters had already occupied the foam matting section of the room, and were quickly employing the submission techniques of Brazilian jiujutsu. As usual a small crowd gathered to watch the two as they fought for space and advantageous positions. Yin lun and Oscar became so entangled at points that it was not easy to distinguish who had the upper hand, for while Oscar was more experienced and the larger combatant, Yin lun was precise, cunning, and accustomed to being outclassed in size. Indeed, a running joke was that his competitive weight division existed only as a formality, until he had entered the scene. In time, and unsurprisingly, his opponent’s superior experienced allowed him to skillfully reverse Yin lun’s net of limbs, resulting in an admission of loss via tap out. Oscar’s good form immediately released upon sensing his opponent signaling that enough was enough; during sparring matches it was fine to seek victories but no member was uncouth to the point of ignoring their opponent’s health, something the group founder was proud of. The two chatted in between short breaths as Oscar offered pointers, as much to the crowd listening as Yin lun. Satisfied, they began another bout. Seeing that there was no cause for his medical involvement the Coordinator stopped watching and did what he always did after sessions: start brewing tea. Seeing what he was up to, two girls called out from across the room

“Nana! Want us to help with the tea cups?” Their tones suggested a good natured teasing as most girls are wont to adopt from time to time. Normally the term of endearment would be lost on most for “Nana the Coordinator” did not resemble an elderly woman, but was in fact an energetic middle aged man.

“Yes my lovely girls, and for the last time, it’s GRAND-MA-STER, not nana!” boomed an unctuous voice. His physical build, not particularly tall, not short, yet with an undeniably large frame, often contrasted with his other duties as the coordinator and de facto leader of SOMMA, the Society of Multilateral Martial Arts. In this particular instance, he was undergoing a tea washing ceremony to brew quality tea. The two young ladies who had called out to him now came over to his make shift tea station, and began placing out various sized tea stained cups. It was a routine that showed all the fluency of regularity, for Master Solomon Li firmly believed in the duties of hospitality. Some small talk was exchanged between the table occupants, steadily growing as the boiling water settled and the pot contents were washed. Soon, a finely roasted fragrance wafted amongst the scene as fresh hot tea was poured out for all members. A plate of biscuits garnished the happy picture, a mixture of private conversations and comments directed to the group at large. Then, one of the girls, Zoey, directed a question at Master Li.

“Say, nana (“Grand-ma-ster!” Solomon interjected), hah same thing! Anyway, our group is getting so big that today we barely have enough cups for everyone. Was the society always this popular?

More attention was seen from the newer members, for the seniors were already familiar with SOMMA’s history. Yet they kept half an ear open as the master explained the origins in his tailored rhetoric, which included bursts of short laughter as well as vivid use of framing.

“I began this group with support from the Morduch Scholars’ Guild, in the 11th year of the new millennium. I actually live closer to the regions of Yuwa and Ezu, but providence brought me here as I saw that Morduch had very little in terms of martial arts communities. Plus, I could avoid competing with Yuwa’s existing groups, who have been established for longer. Respect counts for everything, hahah! At the time I wasn’t a Taoist priest yet, just a young man who was enthusiastic about the martial arts, and thought his ability enough to deal with any troublemakers.”

Some of the seniors smiled hearing that, as Solomon Li may be an eccentric, but an undisputedly powerful one. He did not care to demonstrate it very often, preferring to minimalise his true ability, and few knew the true extents of his skill should he fight seriously. The seniors who knew him best also knew that he preferred it that way, for he was an avid literary scholar and follower of ‘All fighting is based on deception’. It could be difficult to understand Solomon when he was spouting literature, or internal energy formulae, though fortunately his gregarious personality did wonders to offset that strangeness.

“Initially, we were named Morduch Martial Arts, a general title, yet we quickly established ourselves as more than just a club. We were a society in the truest sense, comprised of many varying elements. I would posit that there is not another group like ours across the land. Eventually SOMMA became our calling card, and our early days sparked a collaboration of different practitioners unlike anything I imagined. It is important to note that I did not originally hold class sessions for beginners. It was more free form as people exchanged or taught their respective skills. We learned to hold back our power better after that, isn’t that right Oscar?”

Oscar and Yin lun, now sweating profusely and quite out of breath, had finished grappling and made their way over to the leisurely crowd. Solomon had seen their approach and readied two cups for their refreshment.

“Hmph, I always believe it’s better to choke on reality than dine on delusion.” Oscar’s slightly out of breath response was typical and a few chortles spread amongst the table. In many ways he was the opposite of Solomon, a proudly stoic and straightforward warrior with nothing to hide, and much less concerned with social politics than the coordinator. He was younger, in his mid 20’s, his ruggedly handsome face along with toned body suggested a pugislist, but in stark contrast his mind was undiminished, despite years of strenuous physical toll and countless opponents. One would be foolish to think of him as dull, for he possessed an amazing affinity for history and politics and could discuss either at great length. The two had become acquainted during SOMMA’s first year, making him the oldest senior member there, and despite being polar types of martial artists they steadfastly complemented each other. He was arguably one of the most accomplished amateur fighters in the land, competing in multiple circuits, and being extremely well rounded in all manner of duel based martial arts, or mixed martial arts as was the current moniker. His thirst for greater heights continued to inspire the older and younger generations alike. Solomon laughed in good natured as he continued.

“Well, I must mention that our members have been very grateful ever since you agreed to not hit their faces every time they dropped their guard! But that was a different time altogether my friend, and I daresay that the advent of SOMMA’s truest prototype, what we have today, was seeded three years after we began, with the arrival of the executives. After all, such talented young martial artists were a blessing for any group, and I think it was my good karma that allowed Yin Lun, Jakov, and Tim to cross paths with us here at Morduch.”

Quick glances were cast at the three mentioned, who responded with good grace and amusement. Yin lun was still composed despite recovering from his previous bouts with Oscar. Though he was more readily seen on the ground these days, he originally came to the group as an elite striker from overseas. A slight frame for his well developed body accentuated the intelligence in his boyish face, which reflected the analytical prowess of his tae kwon do background. Already a distinguished martial artist at his old school, he was practically their master’s top pupil. After expanding his horizons with SOMMA’s diverse training scene, he had evolved past the point of recognition when compared to his old self. The original Yin lun was a blur in combat, a fast kicker with a bit of wing chun’s rapid chain punching splashed in. Contemporary Yin Lun had all those advantages, plus being augmented with internal energy controls to moderate power, capable of deadly executions from any limb, and a highly technical grappler too. There was no doubt that his current self was many times more dangerous than in his younger days.

The other two, Tim and Jakov, had known each other for years before joining SOMMA, signing up together. They had been students of a local aikido master, who imparted skills that were rare to find in schools outside of Japan, where their style originated. Tim’s figure often surprised people when they discovered the suppleness and subtlety of his muscle and joint control. A tall broad shouldered young man whose unassuming demeanor matched his impressive physique, he grew up loving the athleticism of power lifters and wrestlers. Ever respectful in conduct, he also trained in traditional karate, and boasted bone shattering strikes along with skillful control of limbs, whether they belong to him or his opponents. Tim’s quiet zest for life fueled his training, which he enjoyed cross referencing with sport sciences as well as reinvigorating with new experiences/techniques. Though not specifically trained for ground fighting, his concepts of stand up grappling were superb and provided an intuitive sense when on the floor. He was a highly prized addition for any form of physical activity.

Jakov was tall as well, though of slimmer frame. Originally purely based in aikido, he was an avid lover of martial arts cinematography, from which he was able to draw inspiration. A true acolyte of fusing lifestyle with martial arts, he boasts extreme flexibility, and displayed a wonderfully pure cultivation of skills, as well as esoteric knowledge of the fighting arts from Japan; all tempered by a playful mannerism that bordered on comical. One would be severely mistaken to assume that his softer style suggested any weakness, for dedication to the point of perfection had resulted in his ability to deal devastating whiplash kicks. He was proficient in swordsmanship, specifically the katana, and his repertoire was unusual as it also held a foundation in Bajiquan, the Chinese kung fu of 8 extremities. Solomon had taught him as a means to improve inner power, but Jakov soon outpaced all initial expectations by truly incorporated the style with his own, able to deliver palm strikes packed with crippling power. He was the current group president, a role preceded by the other two.

“Some of you might wonder why they’re called the executives”, continued Master Li. “Well, the Scholar’s Guild had become concerned that I wielded too much power by myself, so asked me to nominate a president, a vice president and a general secretariat. Of course Oscar and others were by my side, but a new generation requires new blood don’t you think? Hence, the 3 best suited members of the time, Tim, Jakov and Yin Lun, were asked to become my figurehead council hahahah! I joke of course, each of them has contributed invaluably to our society, and I couldn’t be prouder.” There was no mocking tone as he beamed at the 3 executives, his pride was apparent as he indulged in a moment of nostalgia, reminiscing how the boys had become fine young men. Realising how much time had passed as he glanced at the clock on the wall, he decided that it was now time go home. Clearing his throat, he concluded with,

“Well, I could go on and on, we all know hahah! But it’s getting late, and some of you have parents who will be worried if you’re not back home soon. Let’s pack up the equipment and go home!” The next few minutes were a gradual shuffling away, people breaking off into their own conversations while collecting gear, separating the jigsaw floor mats, and changing from training attire to their civilian clothing. Zoey and Joey did not need to be told, but immediately began washing the cups, while Solomon packed away the tea set. The girls resumed their teasing of the man as they dried the cups.

“Nana, you like to tell stories, what about the others who weren’t mentioned? Do you remember how each of them came by?”

“Hahah, it’s Grand- ma- ster! And yes, I do remember everyone who came and trained here, but that’s going to take more than a single session to recount. There’ve been a lot of us, and more every year… Maybe I’ll record it down somewhere before I get senile, eh? Hahaha!”

#prologue

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danny321 · 7 years ago

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Learn Spanish * Useful tips With regard to Studying Speedily

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envirotravel · 8 years ago

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Surprises From Six Weeks in Brazil

As my biggest getaway of 2016, I spent plenty of time meticulously planning my six week trip to Brazil. And yet for all my research and reading, nothing can actually prepare you for the culture shock of completely immersing yourself in a new country, new language, and new lifestyle.

So many aspects of Brazil took me completely by surprise — both good and bad! While I’ve sprinkled in plenty of stray observations throughout my coverage, here are a few final thoughts on the biggest bombshells of my trip. Of course, in the end these are just the musings of a tourist — my experience was shaded heavily by my luck and by my mood. Others might have a different take. Brazilians, feel free to set me straight if I’ve misinterpreted your culture in any way.

How safe we felt

One of our pleasant surprises of the trip was how comfortable Heather and I felt as two women traveling alone through what is often considered a very dangerous county. I should note that we had very low expectations in this regard. Stories of theft in Brazil are so rampant that I literally considered buying a backup iPhone before this trip, because that’s how much I had pre-accepted that I was going to be robbed blind. My first day in São Paulo was a hilarious wake up call that I really needed to chill.

While we were constantly — like literally, constantly — warned by everyone we encountered to be careful with our cameras (to which we were like, yeah, duh), we were vigilant and cautious and had zero issues and really felt surprisingly safe and secure throughout our time in Brazil, with a few uneasy but brief exceptions. Of course many travelers do experience crime in this country, hence the constant warnings, but our experience was a reminder that there are plenty of travelers who move through the country grief-free, too.

How no one gave a flip about Zika

Our trip was at the HEIGHT of Zika mania. My dad, a busy CEO who probably isn’t really sure what country I am in the vast majority of the time, called me specifically to ask if I might consider postponing or canceling my trip — Heather’s parents did the same.

So I arrived half-expecting some sort of Hazmat-covered country under quarantine. And seriously? No one cared. No. one. cared. The first few times Heather or I casually brought up Zika to Brazilians, they looked at us like we were paranoid nutjobs. When we told them that Zika was still headline news every night in the US, they were baffled. “Oh yes, Zika. I had it last year. Dengue is much worse,” a doctor we met at Tomorrowland told us flippantly before casually ordering up another caipirinha. As someone who is kind of the opposite of a hypochondriac, I found the whole attitude very refreshing.

Also? We literally did not see one mosquito. Anywhere. Ironically, our two biggest fears before arriving in Brazil could not have been less of an issue.

How hard it was to communicate

Yet the thing I didn’t think to fear left me so frustrated I nearly flew home early. Living in Thailand, a country where I speak no more than a pitiful few throwaway phrases in the country’s notoriously difficult and tonal language, I have done plenty of pantomiming and getting by with little-to-no shared vocabulary. I’ve traveled to 37 countries now and before Brazil, communication has never been an issue beyond a passing flicker of frustration — I certainly never imagined that a language barrier would negatively influence one of my trips.

It started with a very misplaced sense of confidence. I like to classify myself as a “blissfully barely-competent Spanish speaker.” Which is a winking way of saying that while I’m far from fluent, I love speaking Spanish and embrace the challenge with gusto, never letting an improperly conjugated verb get in the way of a productive conversation in Latin America. And I thought, how different can Spanish and Portuguese be?

Ha! That false sense of security was only heightened by the planning stage of our trip, in which I was able to fairly easily understand several all-Portuguese websites. Oh, how naive I was! I’d soon learn that written Portuguese and spoken Portuguese are two entirely different beasts. While the former is quite similar to its Spanish cousin, the ladder was unlike anything I’d ever heard. “When we first boarded our plan to Brazil for Argentina, we wondered why they were giving the announcements in Russian,” confessed my Israeli travel companions in Jericoacoara. At the risk of offending my Portuguese-speaking readers, the primary adjective I’d use to describe Brazilian Portuguese was mushy. Without the sharp clarifying corners I’d grown to love in the Spanish language, I couldn’t even pick up the different words when spoken to in Brazilian Portuguese. And again, I greatly hesitate to write this and offend any Portuguese speaking readers, but the truth is the language didn’t agree with my ears. In the same way that some people’s taste buds are predisposed to certain foods, the sound of different languages appeal to different people. Portuguese just isn’t my jam.

Of course, I accept full responsibility for not knowing more than the basic guidebook phrases when I arrived in Brazil. Translation apps can only go so far, and I should have been better prepared.

But regardless, you must be thinking, surely there are plenty of Brazilians who speak English? Nao muitos! Studies claim only 3% of Brazilians speak English as a second language. And I found that those who might were extremely reluctant to speak it.

In Southeast Asia, for comparison, my experience has been that there is no expectation among locals that foreigners will speak Thai, Khmer, or Laotian. Fluency in English is also a rare trait in this region, though communication between traveler and local is generally light-hearted and earnest. There’s a sense of, we’re in this together, and neither of us is leaving until we figure out how many papayas I want to buy and how much you’re going to charge me for them, gosh darn it.

But I found that in Brazil, it was harder to get anyone to even attempt to communicate — my apologetic English or hapless attempts at Portuguese were frequently met with terror, blank stares, and the person I was speaking to simply walking away from me. At Tomorrowland Brazil, I was unable to hear an employee at the information booth’s hesitant reply to me in English due to the loud music playing; when I asked her to repeat herself, she shook her head over and over again in mortified horror until I finally gave up and walked away. In Duty Free at São Paulo’s international airport, multiple employees practically sprinted from me in fear when I, again, always apologetically, requested assistance in English. When I wrote emails to hostels with English websites, they went unanswered. And more than once, I called a business and was told harshly, in perfect English, “we don’t speak any English,” before being hung up on. Needless to say my attempts to politely ask, “puedo hablar in Español?” were, with a few exceptions, also a giant flop.

I don’t think any of the people — just a few random examples plucked from six weeks of exasperation — were trying to be rude or unhelpful (in fact, the Brazilians we met who were comfortable speaking English were overwhelmingly warm and bubbly.) It was explained to me that many Brazilians are simply embarrassed by their lack of English abilities. In fact, one Brazilian I met explained that the reason we’d encountered so many domestic travelers at the hostels we stayed at was that Brazilians are often hesitant to travel to other countries, given their limited English abilities. It affects not just travel but business, too. And while many articles I’ve read in researching the lack of English speaking in Brazil assured me that locals would go out of their way to help me despite our lack of shared languages, I unfortunately did not find that to be the case. Maybe we just had bad luck.

Heather and I spent a lot of time reflecting on why we personally found the language barrier in Brazil so upsetting. We met quite a few men on the road (women traveling without male companions in Brazil were rare from our observation) who were basically like, “ha ha yeah we don’t understand anything! Who cares!”

Is it that as women we have to be more concerned about our physical safety? Is it that we are highly attuned to being talked over and brushed off? Do we just find communication to be more important? Whatever it was, I found myself very on edge knowing that I was unable to express myself in the local language, and that if I were to try to use body language or, heaven forbid, my mother tongue, I’d clear the room. I felt invisible and vulnerable in a way I never have before while traveling.

The champagne campaign

On a lighter note, I couldn’t believe how much Brazilians LOVE bubbly. I was extremely onboard with this. Tomorrowland Brasil had more champagne tents than beer ones, our brunch restaurant in Rio de Janeiro had a DIY Bubbles Bar for creative mimosas, and at three out of the five hotels I stayed at on the trip, sparkling wine was handed to us at check-in — at in some cases, again at check-out!

We learned at our cooking class in Paraty that the sparkling wine industry in Brazil is booming, which made it all click.

How diverse it is

One thing that struck me immediately is how many nationalities Brazil encompasses, especially coming from uber-homogonous Thailand. Brazil is enormous and incredibly ethnically diverse, and there is no one way to look Brazilian.

From the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, German-descended Brazilians of the south to the Afro-Caribbean Brazilians of the northeast to the indigenous tribes of the Amazon and everyone inbetween, Brazil is a really beautiful mosaic of different faces.

What novelties we were

I mean hello — this is the country that has hosted the World Cup and the Olympics in just a few short years! Surely a few blonde gringas wandering around would be no big deal? Yet even in one of the most famous cities in the world, we were blessed with some very authentic little interactions that reminded us that we were a fairly exotic sight to some, and provided a sweet and refreshing counter-point to the frustrating anecdotes I outlined above.

It started with the dozens of Brazilians whose eyes lit up with excitement when they saw the American flag I was waving at Tomorrowland and came over to give me a high five — a refreshing reaction, as a citizen of a country that tends to take a lot of international flack.

And it continued with the hilarious National Park Ranger at Christo Redentor who whipped out a notebook and solemnly quizzed us on random English slang and insults after hearing us chatting; furrowing his brow and taking detailed notes at each of our replies. The employees at the pet supply shop it Botafogo who were very indiscreetly taking photos of us with their cell phone until we started chatting in broken Spanish and showing them pictures of our dogs, at which point they dropped the secrecy and each took turns taking photos with us and shyly gifting each of us a special free dog toy to bring home to our pups. The man in the favela who waved us over and insisted I try his BBQ meat straight off the grill, wanting only a smile in return. The salesgirl who sold me a $12 dress and gave me a huge, heart-felt hug before I left the store.

The Uber driver who saved us from disaster and drove us all the way from Rio to Buzios, calling everyone in his phonebook and excitedly repeating the same story — we got the gist of it when we heard “Americanos!” sprinkled in over and over again. Though he didn’t speak a single word of English, he chivalrously tried to be of assistance when we stopped at a rest area for snacks, hugged and kissed us when we got to Buzios, and looked back at his star fares with pride as he started the long three-hour drive back to Rio.

How much I loved São Paulo

While planning this trip I kind of considered São Paulo a necessary evil; a place we had to fly into and out of and stop in on the way to and from Tomorrowland. And yet it literally turned out to be one of my top two favorite destinations of the trip (alongside Jericoacoara, its polar opposite).However, while São Paulo might have been the greatest surprise, all the destinations I visited were great in their own ways. There’s not one stop on our trip that was a disappointment in and of itself, though some were somewhat marred by terrible weather and other circumstances.

I originally only planned four nights in São Paulo, but it was long enough to have lingering moments of wondering what it might be like to move there. (And also to my great surprise, I never once had that “if I lived here…” daydream in Rio.) I loved South America’s largest city so much, however, that I ended up stopping there for three more nights on my way back out of the country.

I spent most of it chilling out and reflecting on the six weeks behind me and little else (hence the lack of a blog post on this time), and what a better place to do so than Hotel Unique, where I wildly splurged on one last night of luxury. One of the most architecturally distinctive hotels I’ve ever stayed in, Hotel Unique summed up the cutting edge art, stylish design and bold style that made me fall for São Paulo in the first place — what a perfect note to say goodbye to the city, and the country, on.

The crazy kissing culture

Heather and I didn’t go out much for the first five weeks we were traveling together (my final week, when I was itinerary-less in Jericoacoara, I let loose a bit more.) However, we had one big night out in Rio and one big night out in Buzios, and both of them had one common theme — we were fending off random liplocks left and right!

In Buzios, we actually ended up chatting to a group of guys away on a bachelor weekend who spoke great English, and playfully confronted them about the apparent Brazilian preference for kissing first, asking names second. They conceded with a laugh that it was true, but countered with a scandalized observation of their own. “But American women… it’s crazy… they dance like they want to [redacted term for intimate activities]!”

The finer nuances of twerking, it seems, have not reached the shores of Brazil. We couldn’t stop laughing. But it’s true — in the US, it’s fairly common sight in nightclubs for people to wordlessly approach each other and dance pretty intimately, which we were learning was as shocking to Brazilians as their saying-hi-with-a-snog was to us.

That Brazil is not a year-round tropical paradise

Perhaps some of you will read this and say “duh.” But Heather and I were ridiculously unprepared for the weather we encountered throughout April and May in Brazil, which is their autumn. Our first week was glorious (residents of São Paulo complained of a heatwave but it felt great to us!), our second was a disaster (it downpoured in Paraty non-stop for days), and the two weeks that followed were mostly nice with a few full days of rain tossed in to keep us on our toes. We had to cancel a bunch of activities as a result, which was a bummer.

However, the larger issue is that we were just completely unprepared for the evening temperatures. During the day, these two Southeast-Asia expats were happy and smiling in sleeveless tops and sundresses. But as soon as the sun went down at 5:30pm, the temperature would drop down to the fifties — omg! — and we would literally be sent into a frenzied cold panic. Neither of us had anything more substantial than jeans and a cardigan, and I kid you not when I say there were multiple people in Paraty wearing puffy coats and winter hats to keep warm. There were many days where we’d make big plans to go out for a few drinks in the evening and as soon as we felt that chill in the air we would freak out, run back to our rooms, put on as many layers and possible, make ourselves into bedding burritos and wish for for the warmth of the sun until morning. Dramatic? Abso-freaking-lutely. But there is very little that I loathe more than being cold — I’ve literally designed my entire life around avoiding it. And I didn’t do a very good job in Brazil.

Don’t let the pictures of palm trees fool you. Brazil is an enormous country with four seasons and a major range of eco-systems. Do your research and pack accordingly!

How carefully you need to pack

In addition to the weather wake-up call above, we also discovered a few other surprises that make packing well essential for a happy trip to Brazil. First of all? Laundry is surprisingly tough to do. Hostels don’t offer per-kilo laundry service like travelers might be used to in Southeast Asia or other parts of Latin America, and laundromats are few and far between.

Second? Electronics are insanely taxed and tough to track down. For long trips, bring extra camera batteries, a spare laptop chargers, the works. I got the shock of my life when my MacBook charger fried and it was going to cost a cool $17oUSD to replace it. No joke! I heard at least one Brazilian explain that Apple products in particular are harshly marked up by both authorized and off-the-books retailers — one of the reasons iPhones are one of the prime targets for street snatchings.

How few backpackers we met

I’ve touched on this before, but in our weeks of traveling through Brazil, I was absolutely blown away by the lack of English-speaking travelers we encountered (which meant, compounded with our issues communicating with locals, Heather and I got to have a lot of deep and meaningful conversations with each other. I’m pretty sure she was ready to never, ever hear the sound of my voice again by the time she headed home.)

Having experienced the Gringo Trail full blast in Peru and Ecuador and throughout Central America, I found it baffling at first. Hello… where are all the battered-passport, backpack-toting Europeans, Australians, and North Americans on long haul trips around the continent?! Where are the retirees in zip-off pants? Where are the honeymooners? I didn’t find a heavy concentration of any of them, or any sort of traditional backpacker scene, until I hit Jericoacoara.

Why? Brazil has more visa restrictions than its neighboring countries, it is bigger and more expensive and thus a bit more intimidating to travel. Plus, six of the seven hostels I stayed in throughout my six weeks in Brazil were overwhelmingly populated by domestic Brazilian travelers. The cool thing is that the Brazilians staying in hostels are more likely than the rest of the population to speak a bit of English, and getting to bond with locals who are also traveling is pretty unique and fun — I went to the beach and to dinner with Brazilians in Jeri, we partied with Brazilians at Tomorrowland and I had some awesome chats over breakfast with Brazilians in São Paulo. However, those were kind of the exceptions and for the most part, everyone in the hostels spoke Portuguese and it was hard to break into that clique as an English speaker. Speaking Spanish does help, as many non-domestic travelers hail from neighboring Spanish-speaking countries, specifically Argentina.

Typically I love traveling alone, however in this case I was incredibly grateful to be on the road with Heather for the majority of my trip, lest I feel totally linguistically isolated from the world for six weeks straight.

How unique the beach culture was

As a certified beach girl, I thought I knew a think or two about spending a day on the sand. Nah. Brazilians have the most unique beach culture I’ve encountered anywhere in the world — I wrote a whole post about it! People always talk about how Brazilians can teach the world a thing or two about how to party. I think they can also show us how to go to the beach!

How tough it was to get a visa

Seriously, hats off to those of you who have to go through the difficult process of procuring a visa for every country you travel to. As a US citizen, most of the visas I’ve applied for in my life have been because I have desired to stay in a specific country longer than the standard visa-waiver would allow. And while they’ve often been a headache to procure, Brazil was the biggest eye opener by far.

First, I had to travel in-person to Bangkok to apply, and by that point I’d already gone back and forth with the embassy multiple times with questions about the application questions and procedure and other logistical issues. The amount of information I had to procure was astounding and I felt like I had assembled approximately twenty-seven documents by the time I was finished. My appointment was stressful, with my interviewer grilling me on minute details of my trip, cross checking my application with Heather’s (who had gone in separately) and berated me for not photocopying my passport ahead of time to the point that I broke down after my appointment worried that my application was going to be denied.

And it was expensive! The whole shebang set me back about $230, not including the cost of a trip to Bangkok, where thankfully I was going to be anyway. I was definitely left with a newfound respect for my fellow travelers who have to cut through this much red tape and more for every trip.

Have you been to Brazil? If so, what surprised you about your trip? If not, which of these would catch you off guard?

Surprises From Six Weeks in Brazil posted first on http://ift.tt/2k2mjrD

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learnspanishfans · 8 years ago

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10 Ways Language Learners Mess Up on Skype

Skype language exchanges are easy, affordable and incredibly effective. What’s more, you can do a language exchange without ever leaving your hometown, or even your house. So no more excuses about how travel is too expensive, keeping you from practising your language with native speakers. Here’s how a language exchange works. You sign up with an online language learning website such as italki, and then search for italki users who speak your target language and have your native language as their target language. When you’ve found these people, you drop them a line, and schedule a face-to-face language exchange. This can be done on Skype, FaceTime, or even in-person if your conversation partner lives near you. Understandably, language exchanges can be nerve-wracking. What if you do things wrong, or offend your exchange partner? It’s actually pretty hard to mess up on a language exchange, since the point is to mess up, then learn from your mistakes. Even so, there are a few things it’s probably good to avoid doing. Here are the mistakes you don’t want to make before or during a language exchange session.

Mistake #1: Waiting Until You Feel Ready

When it comes to language exchanges, waiting for the right time is the biggest mistake people make. Signs that you’re making this mistake include putting the exchange off for another day before you’ve even arranged to meet someone, or rescheduling because you’re too nervous to make the call. Why is this mistake so common? Because people want to wait until they feel ready. Maybe you’re afraid your conversation partner won’t understand you at your current level. Or perhaps you worry that you’ll butcher the language so badly that your conversation partner won’t want to talk to you anymore. Aside from having no basis in reality, this mentality is a classic catch-22. You don’t want to talk with real people until you’re ready, but you’ll never be ready unless you talk with real people! No matter your current level in your target language, it’s never too soon to have a conversation with a native speaker. You might not be able to talk about convoluted topics like the plot of Lost, but who says you have to? The beauty of a language exchange is that you can talk about any subject you want, for as much (or as little) time as you want. In fact, I recommend that you have your first language exchange just seven days after you start learning a new language.

Mistake #2: Dominating the Conversation

A language exchange is not a free language lesson. In a language lesson, you spend the whole time learning another language, and you pay for the privilege. In an exchange, you take turns at learning and teaching. The key’s in the name: it’s an exchange. The point is that you should each benefit equally. Sure, you might be super excited at the prospect of practising your target language. But remember that the other person is equally excited and deserves the same amount of time dedicated to practising their target language. How can you make sure you don’t dominate the conversation? Use a timer. For instance, you can spend thirty minutes chatting in only your native language, followed by thirty minutes chatting in only the other person’s native language. This doesn’t have to be thirty consecutive minutes. I’ve heard of conversation partners who alternate the language every ten minutes! If you’re inexperienced in having extended conversations in your target language and are worried about your brain melting before the conversation is over, this is a useful way to keep up the conversation’s momentum, while still speaking your target language 50% of the time.

Mistake #3: Switching Back to Your Native Language While You Should be Speaking Your Target Language

Make a pact with your conversation partner before the talk begins that no matter what, you’ll keep the conversation in the correct language until it’s time to switch. This is especially important if the other person’s skills in your native language are better than your skills in their language. When you know that the other person will understand perfectly what you want to say if you switch back to your native language “just for a minute”, then it’s really easy to let yourself slip back to it every time you get stuck. But you need to force yourself to power through these tough parts in your target language, otherwise how can you ever expect to reach fluency?

Mistake #4: Expecting the Other Person to Steer the Conversation

Be an active participant in your language exchange. Don’t sit back and make the other person think up all the questions and conversation topics. It’s not fair to them to have to keep coming up with interesting material to talk about. Worried that you’ll run out of things to say? Then before the language exchange, write down a few topics of conversation, along with key vocabulary related to each topic. Whenever there’s a lull in conversation, rather than hoping that the other person finds something good to say (or worse: ending the call prematurely), change the subject to one of your prepared topics. This is also a brilliant way to boost your vocabulary! Once you have a couple of language exchanges under your belt, you’ll get the hang of having impromptu conversations and won’t need to work so hard to find topics to chat about.

Mistake #5: Using Your Webcam Every Single Time

Listening comprehension is usually the last skill that language learners master in their target language. Most learners tend to get a false sense of confidence in their listening ability when it comes to face-to-face conversations, because they have some visual context to rely on when they don’t understand every word in a sentence. Things like facial expression and overall body language go a long way in helping you fill in the gaps when conversing in your target language. Turn off the video during a language exchange to instantly see (or rather, hear) how good your listening comprehension really is. If you turn off video and are surprised at how much harder it is to understand the other person, then that’s a sign that you should spend more time on your listening comprehension. Start asking your conversation partners on a regular basis to spend part of the language exchange with the webcam off so you can both practise listening skills.

Mistake #6: Skyping the Same Person Over and Over

You can easily get used to one person’s speaking style in your target language, and tailor your listening comprehension toward that style. But just like your native language, your target language can sound very different depending on the speaker. If you only speak with the same person over and over, you’ll probably find it difficult to understand a new person when you chat with them in your target language. Even if you have one or two favourite conversation partners that you really “click” with, be sure to speak regularly with new people so your ear can get accustomed to several types of speech, accents and dialects. Choose young people, old people, men, women, and people from a variety of geographic regions.

Mistake #7: Asking Grammar Questions

Language exchanges are not the place for grammar questions! Save specific grammar questions for when you’re paying a teacher. Most native speakers of any language (who aren’t teachers of their language) have never really given their language’s grammar a second thought, and probably couldn’t explain the rules to your satisfaction anyway. Plus, grammar questions can get annoying after a while. If the other person is fascinated by grammar, then by all means, ask away. Otherwise, make brief notes during the conversation of any specific grammar questions that come up while you’re speaking and listening. Then schedule a language lesson with a teacher so you can get clarification.

Mistake #8: Keeping the Conversation in Your Comfort Zone

Even if you’ve only been speaking your target language for a short time, I bet that there are some subjects that you can already talk about with complete fluency. There are certain topics that come up over and over in conversations with new people, such as your favourite foods, what your family’s like, or what you do at your job. These are precisely the topics that you should avoid talking about during your language exchange (Exception: when you’re just starting out). You’ve already mastered these subjects. They’re old news. Your time would be better spent talking imperfectly about a subject you’re having difficulty with than talking perfectly about a subject you know well. This is how you’ll master a greater variety of vocabulary and learn to speak fluently about nearly any topic.

Mistake #9: Asking Only Closed Questions

Nothing makes a conversation fall flat faster than a question that can only be answered with “yes” or “no”. Don’t fall into the habit of asking your conversation partner things like, “Do you like Thai food?” or “Do you enjoy your job?” These types of questions offer no opportunity for the other speaker to expand on the topic and branch out into a deeper conversation. Instead, ask questions such as, “What are your favourite types of food?” or, “What do you enjoy most about your job?”. Then watch how the conversation continues flowing naturally after the other speaker answers your question.

Mistake #10: Making Inappropriate Jokes

When you meet with a language exchange partner, bear in mind that you’re not only exchanging languages. You’re also exchanging cultures. It’s important to do this in a way that’s mutually respectful. Appropriate humour is is fine - and is vital to effective learning. But it should go without saying that you should avoid any jokes that could be considered offensive to your conversation partner. Also, don’t try to be clever by using pop culture references or double entendres. This makes it difficult to follow what you’re saying, which isn’t at all fun for your language exchange partner.

Over to You

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in a language exchange session? Let us know in the comments.

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careergrowthblog · 6 years ago

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Why @researchEd1 is so brilliant. And necessary.

One of the most exciting elements of the education scene in the last five years…. no, let me start again….. THE most exciting element of the education scene in the last five years as far as I’m concerned, has been the emergence and expansion of the ResearchEd movement started by Tom Bennett in 2013. Supported all the way by Hélène Gladin-O’Shea and a small band of volunteers, ResearchEd has played a massively important role in providing a forum for research-informed ideas to circulate around the system. For me personally, it’s been a huge influence.

The first event at Dulwich College in 2013 was epic – from Ben Goldacre’s grand late-arrival entrance onwards. I wrote a blog about it at the time and this is how it starts:

What a day!

Tom Bennett…. 2013:2018

Five years of ResearchEd

Ben Newmark – Rugby 2017 – the problematic use of generic skill descriptors versus knowledge based assessments in history teaching.

Daisy Christodoulou – several talks at different events slightly merging in my memory: ideas about formative and summative assessment, comparative judgement and the concept of difficulty in tests.

Why @researchEd1 is so brilliant. And necessary. published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege

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